Xcel: Summer Is Hot, Who Knew?

When all else fails, blame your screw ups on God. He's known to do all sorts of totally unexpected things, like causing high temperatures in late July days in metropolitan Denver, just like he did in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005 when you also screwed up due to such unexpected weather.

Xcel officials blamed blistering temperatures over the weekend for equipment failures that led to sporadic outages throughout metro Denver and other parts of Colorado. . . . About 6,300 Colorado households and businesses were without electricity late Monday afternoon. At the height of the problem late Sunday night, 12,000 customers - mostly in metro Denver - were hit by outages.

Perhaps, Xcel let it happen because it knows that it will suffer no consequences for doing so:

[C]ustomers will see no credits for excessive outages this year. In a 2005 settlement with the PUC, Xcel agreed to invest an additional $11 million in system maintenance in exchange for the PUC not levying any penalties for service problems in 2006.

Xcel Energy will be asking Denver customers to lock themselves into twenty more years of service from it in the August 8, 2006 primary election, when voter turnout is expected to hit record lows because there are no contested races in most of the city and there has been almost no publicity about the vote, which was just recently announced.

Temperatures in Colorado at Denver International Airport were 101 degrees Farenheit on Saturday, and 103 degrees Farenheit on Sunday.

Cross Posted at Colorado Confidential.